U.S. growers produce nearly $35 billion worth of marijuana annually, making the illegal drug the country’s largest cash crop, bigger than corn and wheat combined, an advocate of medical marijuana use said in a study released on Monday. The report, conducted by Jon Gettman, a public policy analyst and former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, also concluded that five U.S. states produce more than $1 billion worth of marijuana apiece: California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii and Washington. California’s production alone was about $13.8 billion, according to Gettman, who waged an unsuccessful six-year legal battle to force the government to remove marijuana from a list of drugs deemed to have no medical value. Tom Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said he could not confirm the report’s conclusions on the size of the country’s marijuana crop. But he said the government estimated overall U.S. illegal drug use at $200 billion annually. Gettman’s figures were based on several government reports between 2002 and 2005 estimating the United States produced more than 10,000 metric tons of marijuana annually. He calculated the producer price per pound of marijuana at $1,606 based on national survey data showing retail prices of between $2,400 and $3,000 between 2001 and 2005. The total value of 10,000 metric tons of marijuana at $1,606 per pound would be $35.8 billion. By comparison, the United States produced an average of nearly $23.3 billion worth of corn annually from 2003 to 2005, $17.6 billion worth of soybeans, $12.2 billion worth of hay, nearly $11.1 billion worth of vegetables and $7.4 billion worth of wheat, the report said. Gettman said the 10-fold increase in U.S. marijuana production, from 1,000 metric tons in 1981 to 10,000 metric tons in 2006, showed the country was failing to control marijuana by making its cultivation and use illegal. "Marijuana has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of the economy of the United States," he said. "The contribution of this market to the nation’s gross domestic product is overlooked in the debate over effective control." "Like all profitable agricultural crops marijuana adds resources and value to the economy," he added. "The focus of public policy should be how to effectively control this market through regulation and taxation in order to achieve immediate and realistic goals, such as reducing teenage access." Riley said illegal drug use was a "serious part of the economy," but he rejected the notion of an economic argument for legalizing marijuana. He said marijuana use was an "inherently harmful activity" with serious physical and mental health consequences. He said more American teens were in treatment centers for marijuana dependency than for all other drugs combined.
She’s no prison rat. And her new $1,200 "vibrator" is "a very good tool," ex-con domestic diva Martha Stewart confided in a raunchy riposte with Sirius Satellite Radio colleague Howard Stern. The usually stiff-shirt Stewart showed her down-and-dirty side last week. She recalled dating Mayor Bloomberg "years ago" – and confessed she couldn’t get past the Hannibal Lecter character while dating "Silence of the Lambs" actor Anthony Hopkins. "Do you want someone eating your brain while you are sitting in your beautiful dining room in Maine?" she wondered. "I would have probably had a very nice relationship with Anthony Hopkins but I couldn’t get past the Lechter thing." She called her current beau a filthy-rich Microsoft retiree with his own plane and boat. "Those guys have all the toys," she said. The woman imprisoned for the ImClone insider-trading scandal also said she ran into "girls with mustaches and girls with beards [who] would ask me for lunch" behind bars. "They also wanted to learn," she added ". . . Everybody in prison has a business plan." She said she always told guards that she’d simply fallen whenever they asked her to snitch on who had bruised her arm. And she’s still fuming at Donald Trump over her axed spinoff of "The Apprentice." "Don’t sit us next to each other," she said.
This is Mimi, the first cat to give birth to puppies, her owner claims. Brazilian Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, says three of the cat’s six offspring, which were born three months after Mimi mated with a neighbour’s dog, have canine traits. A geneticist from the Passo Fundo University plans to take blood samples from the animals to verify the claim.
An employee at the Ford Hapeville plant, on his last day of work before his forced early retirement, won nearly a quarter-million dollars on a scratch-off lottery ticket. Jerome McInnis, 52, of College Park, stopped at a convenience store on Fayetteville Road early Friday to buy gas, Georgia Lottery officials said. The 13-year Ford employee purchased a $5 ticket for the "Bah Humbucks" game. The ticket was a winner, good for $225,000, lottery officials said. "I paid for the gas, but I was so excited that I drove off and forgot to get my gas," McInnis said in a press release issued by the lottery. McInnis is the first lottery player to win the top prize in Bah Humbucks, which went on sale Tuesday. McInnis said he elected to take the early retirement package offered to Ford employees when the decision was made to shut down the Hapeville assembly plant. "This comes at a great time," he said of his new-found wealth. He said he plans to invest most of his winnings, according to the lottery press release. "This will enable me to take care of everything," he said.
